String

Overview

String is one of those unglamorous materials that turns out to be in everything: bows, crossbows, fishing rods, leads, bundles, tripwire hooks, candles and — four string in a square — wool, which matters enormously if you have spawned somewhere without sheep and need a bed. It also places as tripwire, the trigger for the oldest trap design in the game, and it is what the loom and the banner system quietly depend on through wool. Spiders drop 0 to 2 each and cave spiders the same, so a mineshaft or a spider spawner supplies stacks; cobwebs cut with Shears drop string as well, which is the main reason mineshafts are worth clearing rather than avoiding. Fishing produces it as junk, and wandering traders sell it. Since 1.21.2 it is also half of a Bundle, so string demand has gone up in worlds where players carry bundles for odds and ends. Keep a stack: it is the item most often missing when a recipe fails. Nothing else in the crafting tree turns up in as many unrelated recipes as this one does, so gather it whenever a spider offers.

Crafting bows, crossbows, fishing rods, leads and bundles, making wool for a bed when no sheep are nearby, and laying tripwire for traps and detection circuits.

String is a crafting material item in Minecraft Java Edition 1.21.4. Sixty-four fit in one inventory slot. You get it by killing Cat, Cave Spider, Spider, and Strider.

It is an ingredient in 9 recipes, among them Bow, Bundle, Candle and 6 more.

How to get it

Kill spiders for 0 to 2 string each, up to 5 with Looting III, or cut cobwebs with shears. 4 string craft into 1 wool, which is the fastest route to a bed without sheep.

Tips

Four string makes one wool, so three spiders is a bed on a world with no sheep in sight.
Cut cobwebs with shears in a mineshaft; each web is free string and the webs themselves are useful blocks.
Tripwire strung across a corridor triggers a hook without being visible from a distance.
A spider spawner walled into a farm supplies string, spider eyes and experience from one build.